Graeme Swann was in sparkling form last week, musing in an interview on knighthoods, his ambitions as a singer and how he would like to solve the eternal bugbear of jobbing cricketers – congestion on the M1 – by inventing a viable hovercar. But one thing particularly caught the eye, a statistic that suggested that if Swann maintained his current strike rate of a fraction under 4.5 wickets per match, it would take him four and a half years to overhaul Sir Ian Botham's record total for an Englishman of 383 Test scalps.

"It would be lovely to think I can carry on doing well over that period of time, but I don't like making predictions," Swann said. "I know how fickle fate can be because I had eight years out of the squad. Anyway, I might get offered that record deal tomorrow and I'll be off to Japan with David Hasselhoff." Jimmy Anderson, with 215 wickets, might beat him to it without the intervention of the Hoff, but there are two current players ahead of the Lancastrian on the list who may once have harboured ambitions of reeling in Botham – Matthew Hoggard with 248 and English cricket's great enigma of the past decade, Steve Harmison, with a double Nelson swag of 222, for England.

It is a sign of the strength of the bowling resources available to the coach, Andy Flower, that recalls for either are as unlikely as Richie Benaud's tailor ever receiving a request to knock up a blazer in a shade other than cream, fawn, bone, taupe, mushroom, ivory or oatmeal. But it is a shame that the international career of Harmison, two years younger than Hoggard, and now flourishing as a perceptive and droll analyst on Sky Sports while recovering from injury, is effectively over at the age of 32.

The Durham fast bowler, dubbed "Nasser Hussain's white West Indian" by Steve Waugh during the 2002-03 Ashes tour, remains the only Englishman to top the ICC's Test bowling rankings since the system was established in 1987 and before the ratings were applied retrospectively to mark every player in Test history. Harmison hit the peak in 2004, a golden year in which he took 67 wickets in 13 Tests.

He came of age on the tour of the Caribbean in the spring of that year, bounding in with his left arm pointing to the heavens in the classical style, pounding the perfect length that addles batsmen's footwork and tearing the West Indies apart with spells of genuine 90mph menace. It is often forgotten in the wake of the 2005 Ashes victory that England owed a debt on that tour to the obduracy and artfulness of the three old lags, Hussain, Mark Butcher and Graham Thorpe, to post competitive totals, but Harmison's hostility was the key indicator that the team was building towards posing an authentic threat to the Australians the following year.

His seven for 12 in the first Test at Kingston to skittle the hosts, bowling towards the end of his spell to a field of six slips, a gully and a short leg, was a sight those of us who had lived through the maulings of the 1970s and 80s thought we would never see. By the time the Ashes came around Harmison's verve had tailed off at the end of the preceding South Africa tour but he found it again to give Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer and Ricky Ponting the hurry-up in a fiery opening spell at Lord's that was the epitome of bristling with intent.

Then, at Edgbaston, he produced the ball of his career, utterly bamboozling Michael Clarke on the Saturday evening with a beautifully flighted slower ball that lingered in the Birmingham air as the batsman completed his follow through and yorked him. Clarke departed with a rueful smirk, the guile of a masterly confidence-trickster earning his respect more than regret. It was a symbol of England's progress and the deciding factor that convinced many supporters that England were not just capable of winning, but actually would.

The decline did not come as quickly as his critics think and Harmison bowled well on moribund Pakistan pitches in late 2005 after his excursion with the ICC World XI to Australia, and superbly at Old Trafford in 2006 to take 11 Pakistan wickets. It was only after that summer, and the anxiety-induced wide to open the 2006-07 Ashes campaign, that mutterings about being more trouble than he was worth began to be aired. Harmison remained a regular for another 18 months before first settling into the role of being picked when conditions suited him and then being jettisoned altogether.

And yet for all England's success without him there is a sense of waste. Courtney Walsh took 297 Test wickets after his 32nd birthday, Sir Richard Hadlee 252, Glenn McGrath 186 and Curtley Ambrose, the bowler Harmison at his best most resembled, 147. He said last year that if his England career was over, he at least had the memories. So have we, Steve. So have we.